Man with local roots helps with Hurricane Sandy cleanup

As Superstorm Sandy battered the East Coast last month, Matt Pelak and his buddies responded to help with military precision. That's natural for them, though. They're used to it.

Mr. Pelak, a Dallas native, is part of the nonprofit volunteer group called Team Rubicon, a nationwide collection of military veterans and medical professionals that responds to humanitarian crises.

When a disaster strikes, they do it all - or try to. They help local emergency officials, provide medical care, run supplies, cut up downed tress, clear debris, pump flooded basements, rip out soaked drywall and more.

After responding to Superstorm Sandy, Mr. Pelak noted one of the group's biggest missions was shoveling sand that was left behind from the storm surge.

"It looked like it snowed sand," he said. "In tornadoes, we do a lot of tree work. In hurricanes, it's a lot of mucking in the basement, destroying wet drywall and shoveling sand."

At the start of the year, Team Rubicon had 600 volunteers and four full-time staffers. Today, there are 6,000 volunteers and seven full-time staffers.

Mr. Pelak, 34, is director of strategic partnerships of Team Rubicon, an organization that organically started in 2010 when a military veteran rallied some friends to respond to the earthquake in Haiti.

A 1996 graduate of Dallas High School, Mr. Pelak later joined the Air Force. Afterward, he joined the Army National Guard and completed paramedic school. He served a tour of duty in Iraq between 2003 and 2004. He later returned to Iraq between 2007 and 2009 as a contractor for the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service.

Mr. Pelak works as a firefighter and paramedic in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and as adjunct faculty at the National Center for Security and Preparedness at the University at Albany-State University of New York. He is a member of the Maryland Army National Guard. Mr. Pelak credits his upbringing with pushing him toward serving the country.

"You know the blue-collar nature of the Wyoming Valley. It's a family based and work-centered area," Mr. Pelak said. "You learn the value of hard work and being there for each other. I took that and learned lessons in the military and rolled it all into one."

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